SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the That's-what-they-WANT-you-to-think dept.
In the Salon
There seems to be a lot of science being thrown at the "Trump Phenomenon." Salon covers yet another, and interviews the author.
A new paper, recently presented at the American Political Science Association's annual convention, suggests a widespread motive driving people to share fake news, conspiracy theories and other hostile political rumors. "Many status-obsessed, yet marginalized individuals experience a 'Need for Chaos' and want to 'watch the world burn'," lead author Michael Petersen tweeted, announcing the availability of a preprint copy.
Truth, in such a worldview, is beside the point, which offers a new perspective on the limitations of fact-checking. The motivation behind sharing or spreading narratives one may not even believe can help make sense of a variety of threatening or confusing recent developments in advanced democracies. It also sheds light on disturbing similarities with outbreaks of ethnic or genocidal violence, such as those seen in Rwanda and the Balkan nations during the 1990s.
Preprint of the paper available at PsyArXiv, here. [DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/6m4ts]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:29PM (9 children)
As elaborated by George Carlin:
1. Some people are really stupid.
2. Some people are full of crap.
3. Some people are friggin' nuts.
But only slightly more seriously:
1. Anti-intellectualism means that a lot of people truly believe that my ignorance is as good as your knowledge. And in the more extreme version, religious belief systems that demand that folks genuinely answer the question "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" with "You, of course."
2. Everything we know about cognitive dissonance, including the fact that any facts that fail to conform to your belief system will be discarded regardless of the evidence in their favor.
3. Some people think of backing their political party a lot like backing their favorite NFL team, and thus have no problem spreading deceptions if they think it will help out "their" side. Never mind that they probably stand to gain at best nothing if "their" side wins, because neither of the sides with real power in the political system give a damn about them one way or another (just like their favorite NFL team doesn't really care about their fan bases either).
4. There is an element of "Because screw you, that's why!" Which is largely a consequence of the supposed adults in the room repeatedly screwing things up, badly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:32PM (8 children)
1. is self-inflicted, I think. The people who are supposed to be the smart ones, the ones who have really studied and mastered difficult subjects, still fuck things up on an epic scale. So the average person, who didn't go to those lengths says, "Guess you weren't so smart after all, Mr. Smarty Pants." Then he also remembered how haughty Mr. Smarty Pants was all the times he dismissed Mr. Average Person as "not having the faintest idea what he was talking about," and his reaction takes on a more gleeful and vicious edge.
3. tribalism is a bane of civilization. Tribalists like to exploit that foible to endless effect. They want, in essence, to drag us back to the internecine quagmire that all regions dominated by tribalism have always been. If you think about which regions and societies are successful, and which are not (in terms of the indices of civilization), the ones where tribalism dominate are largely inversely proportional to human freedom and democracy.
4. rage tends to work that way. You listen to a guy calmly explain why this and this and that and that, and then he stabs you in the face. Then you get a little mad, and listen, with greater effort, to the same guy calmly explain why this and this and that and that, and when you glance behind you because your kid is trying to get your attention or your wife needs an operation, he stabs you in the back. And that goes on and on and on, with the guy betraying and injuring you in any of a thousand ways, and your self-restraint wears away to nothing, and all that remains is rage. In short, where we are with respect to this question has been earned. It has been so earned.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:04PM (7 children)
I don't think that's accurate.
The people who cause the greatest difficulties are high-status idiots, which is to say people who were never that smart, never really studied and mastered a difficult subject, but are still put in charge of things, often because of who their daddy was. These people put lots of time and energy into being what Aldous Huxley brilliantly termed "A stupid person's idea of the clever person". Meanwhile the smart people (scientists, doctors, engineers, etc) are busily doing useful work, but are hated by everyone too dumb to do what they do.
Anti-intellectualism is nothing new in the US, though, as anyone familiar with the Scopes trial knows.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:30PM (4 children)
I saw a girlfriend of a friend of mine watching "The Big Bang Theory". Holy shit Huxley's show summarizes that TV show in eight words.
To give you an idea how powerful that is to pull it off in eight words, my favorite political movement takes fourteen words to describe itself.
I think more than one episode of "the big bang theory" suffers from the "Huxley's eight words" effect. Since (((certain people))) invented the media archetype of "the nerd" in the 70s, I think all legacy media has suffered from "Huxley's eight words effect" or whatever its called.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:26PM
Before disintegrating into purity tests and outright stupidity.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:59PM
"WE MUST SECURE THE EXISTENCE OF FUCK BETA AND A FUTURE FOR GAY NIGGERS"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @05:25AM (1 child)
Do you miss r/The_Donald so badly you've gotta turn SN into a latrine too?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 13 2018, @11:44AM
Nothing wrong with a latrine. Everyone poops [amazon.com].
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 13 2018, @12:39AM (1 child)
Long-Term Capital Management [wikipedia.org]. Led by two Nobel prize winners, including Myron Scholes, of the Black-Scholes Model [wikipedia.org], which is taught all over the world.
Mars Climate Orbiter [wired.com], designed by friggin' rocket scientists, burned up because they didn't convert English to metric.
VW emissions scandal [wikipedia.org]. Everybody does say German engineers suck.
Those are a handful of relatively recent examples off the top of my head. You don't need too many of those to justify the average man looking askance at claims made by the experts.
Now, you may say those don't add up to "epic," but I reckon they're more deserving of that description than the neat skateboard tricks the kids do like to post to YouTube.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @08:39AM
Commenting as an actual rocket scientist, that is not true. The real reason is more involved and had to do with project (mis) management and communication. The software that was used had worked multiple times before, but was ordained from high that it be converted to metric, which was also fine...but not all departments got the memo.
As Feynman noted in one of his books, the real genius of Apollo was not technical, but organizational.